


Salt Water Unbounded

by Dorinda



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Age of Sail, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Swimming, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:42:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9351809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: In the aftermath of the torture at Mahon, with Stephen injured and Jack kept at a distance, how can they both recover?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the novel _HMS Surprise_ , between chapters 4 and 5.

**I.**

Jack clasped his hands tightly behind him. He had first learned the habit as a midshipman, after enough mastheadings and beatings to teach even him to keep his hands out of his pockets. And now, as the new Captain of the Surprise, he found he felt more balanced with his hands behind him whenever he paced his own quarterdeck, leaning slightly forward against the wind and the ship's lively grace.

But now he felt the farthest thing from balanced. Now he held his hands behind himself against his will, gripping tight enough to hurt. Stephen was passing by.

Stephen, who forced himself to walk—if you could call such a gait walking—the length of the ship every day, the torturers' handiwork standing out all over his meager frame. He staggered, wrapped in a motley assemblage of coats, comforters, and blankets, his colourless eyes burning into the far distance as he disdained everyone who watched him go.

Since their first day aboard he had done this, whatever the weather, whatever the mood of the sea. And on that first day, Jack, flush with his new command and his new freedom and his friend miraculously alive at his side, had eagerly leapt to catch and hold Stephen against a slight heel of the deck.

He had learned, that day. Stephen's eyes, his searing voice, his entire frail body, recoiling with the little remaining energy it possessed—Jack had learned, and taken the lesson to his heart.

But how his schooled heart had stung under the lash then, and how it ached now, as Stephen passed from the taffrail close enough that Jack could have touched him. Sweat slicked Stephen's face, and the tiniest movements of the Surprise beneath his unsteady feet brought on effort that looked like agony.

Jack would have given so much even just to put one hand beneath Stephen's arm. To feel the tight-corded muscles ease for only one moment against him.

He looked away to leeward, studying the building clouds. Every night as he tried to sleep he remembered the house of torture, the end of all his efforts. He had knelt before the terrible machine, where amazingly, a gift from Providence, Stephen was still alive. His eyes had searched Jack's face, his bloodless lips had curved in such a rare, fine, blessed smile. And strangely, sweetly, his brow had furrowed, as if he was seeing Jack wounded and would shortly reach out to pull the splinter or stitch the gash. With his hands. His poor hands.

Jack had unstrapped him, lifted him as gently as could be, though it could never have been gentle enough. He had held him, carried him, tipped water into his parched mouth, and felt that they were entirely reunited. For a moment there in that monstrous place all the efforts were rewarded, all the pains eased, just to look long and long into Stephen's face. Jack supposed he had thought he would simply be able to go on as he needed to. However...

Surprise frolicked a little, like a restive horse, bringing a slap of spray in over the rail. Despite himself Jack looked sharply over at Stephen, but managed to stay where he was. Stephen paced unevenly onward, his hands held stiffly away from his sides as if they were bunches of burning kindling.

Jack turned away, and found he was breathing hard with the effort.

 

* * *

**II.**

Three days out from Madeira and the sun shone down through the clear noon air. Not a breeze to be had, the sails hanging limp on the yards, though there was the promise of clear sailing tomorrow. In the meantime, Jack sweated under his broadcloth through the noon observation, until he could hand the ship over to Pullings and strip down for a swim.

Naked, he sprang outward from the rail, his hands cleaving the water before him in a silvery plunge that took him deep, deep down. The sea rushed and surged and embraced him all over, cooled his hot skin, and filled his eyes with restful blues and greens. He stroked forward and upward from the depths, pulling easily, for the sparkling mirror that was the surface.

An easy side-stroke all around the ship gave him a good waterline view of her sides and her copper, and he was taking mental notes for the carpenter when he caught a familiar silhouette against the sky.

It was Stephen above him, wrapped in some shaggy thing or other despite the heat, standing at the rail. Not sitting at his ease, despite the dozen seats or cushions that the crew would have tumbled over themselves to bring him. He stood shadowed like a hunting hawk against the sun, and Jack could not see his face, but he felt the watching eyes.

Jack stretched out to float on his belly, let his warm face rest in the water for a moment, blowing bubbles. The first few things he had wanted to call up to Stephen, he gradually bit back and swallowed. At last he surfaced, blowing spray from his mouth, and hailed:

"Ahoy the ship!"

"Ahoy," Stephen responded, giving the word that turn of pride he brought to any term even vaguely nautical.

"I suppose even this sun will not quite do?" called Jack, feeling its warmth on the top of his head despite his thick wet hair.

"It is tending the way I would wish," Stephen said. "But Tom Pullings tells me all sun is pale against the Indian sun, and makes me hunger for it inexpressibly."

"One of us, at least," laughed Jack. "That will be a satisfaction when I am boiled into a curled shrimp."

"You will brine yourself into salt beef first," said Stephen, "with your eternal swimming."

There was something indulgent in his scorn, however, and Jack felt the tiniest spark of hope in his breast. The sea was so clean and gentle around him, lifting and floating his body with no effort, easing all his muscles. And before he could think further, he called, "Why not come down, Stephen, and tell me how it compares with Bath."

He kept his tone light and turned his attention away from Stephen at once, splashing a few strokes away and then up and under like a breaching whale. When he surfaced again, he saw with relief that Stephen was still at the rail. The shadow of Stephen's head moved in a stiff but decisive nod.

Jack raised his voice in a battle-worthy hail: "Bonden! Barrett Bonden! Report to the larboard rail with three men and a running bowline, at the double now!"

In what felt like moments, Stephen, clothed in nothing but his own fierce dignity, was slung safely in a running bowline around his waist and thighs, being lowered gradually toward the surface of the sea by far more men than were necessary for such a slight weight.

Jack did not watch him. After his first full sight of the marks the torture had left upon Stephen's thin body, he thrust his face into the water, the salt burning his eyes.

When Stephen was dangling in the sea shoulder-deep, Jack floated over. The taut cords of Stephen's neck and the narrowing of his eyes reminded Jack of nothing so much as a tomcat he had known in his childhood, who had faced helpful baths at his childish hands, bearing and hating them in such equal measure as to leave him paralyzed in the nursery pail.

How Jack longed to give Stephen a few of the words he'd been given in his day—how to spread to the water's embrace and let it bear you up, how to use your air, how your arms and legs could pull or push with so little effort. And as he saw Stephen wobble in the rope sling and try to clutch at it with his hands, the pain streaking through his face like lightning, he knew just how it would feel if he were able to reach out to him, Jack's own body so buoyant and steady and at home.

He clenched his fists under the surface and treaded water with his legs alone. "How do you find it, old Stephen?" he asked.

A small swell rolled through, lifting them easily and then subsiding, lapping at the side of the ship with its gentle chuckling tongue.

Stephen blinked, and again, his face closed but thoughtful as if considering the aftertaste of a strange and secret new wine. Jack could see his spine straightening, his arms floating out to his sides, weightless.

"Tolerable," Stephen said at last. "And at the least it has fewer people pushing at one and sloshing themselves about than does the King's bath."

Jack nodded carelessly, and circled round for a while in a simplified dog-paddle without a word. He felt Stephen's gaze on him, warmer than the sun.

 

* * *

**III.**

Every day after that when there was leisure, at the peak of the afternoon heat Stephen would find his way to the rail and stand there until someone remembered to fetch the bowline. Jack almost regretted he had begun it, on the days Stephen had overdone his walks or his shaky crawls up to the mizen-top; Jack would end up forcing himself back and forth in his dog-paddle, poorly pretending blitheness as Stephen hung glaring in the sea, ashen and weak.

Today, however, there was something new, though Jack couldn't quite put a name to it. Perhaps Stephen's skin, taking colour from sun and salt, or perhaps his posture in the bowline, both more easy and more flexible. As swells lifted and dropped him, he swayed with them automatically, and no longer clung to the rope. His legs, still thin but regaining sinewy muscle, circled and waved beneath the water.

The sun baked down, sending promises of what they would find so much farther south. Jack did his simple paddling for a while, though he knew Stephen had seen so much of it by now that he must remember it. Then Jack rolled over to float on his back, his eyes slitted, his head turned slightly to keep one ear above the water.

Several days before, upon being hoisted back aboard, Stephen had discovered some creature or other attached to his bowline. He had become perfectly besotted with the strange little monster, keeping it in a jar of seawater and drawing it from all angles, making discoveries which he was still trying to explain to Jack.

Jack, his front heated by the sun and his back supported by the sea, listened to Stephen's voice so close to him, blissfully drinking it in. He understood perhaps one word in four, to be generous. He hadn't been this uncomplicatedly happy in some time.

"...and from the dorsal presentation," Stephen said, "it became apparent that there are in fact no air sacs, none whatsoever, and it is propelled without such assistance." He spoke with firm satisfaction, such that Jack half-expected him to finish with a "hah!" as if making the winning touch with a foil.

Jack did not reply; Stephen did not require it of him, and the times Jack had pretended to follow the anatomical specifics Stephen had had some pleasant laughs at him. Now Jack simply savoured the words, though more the sound than the sense.

"...And thus," Stephen went on, to the noise of some splashing, "we shall see that what one water creature has done, another can do." And Jack, warned somehow by the determination in the announcement, lifted his head just in time to see Stephen pull himself out of the bowline altogether.

One would not have thought it, with such a slight man, and without his lead-soled boots or other appurtenances—in fact, without anything at all, bare as a tadpole—but Stephen sank instantly, much faster than Jack had ever been able to submerge himself. Jack started and lunged toward Stephen's disappearing head without thought—but just before he reached him, one of Stephen's hands grasped the floating rope. His fingers, still showing their injury, nevertheless held on firmly, and Jack thought of Stephen's nightly practice on the 'cello, pushing himself past all good sense, as Jack bit his tongue and pretended to occupy himself with the violin.

Stephen's face reappeared just above the surface, if barely, snorting water from the nose. He had a thoughtful look again, inward, as when Jack passed by his little cabin and saw him considering a complex piece of dissection.

Jack had had many struggles in his days, including at sword's-point against a charging foe. But the struggle he faced now against himself felt as if it dwarfed them all. His muscles twitched, his hands half-closing on fistfuls of water, as he repeatedly quashed the urge to gather Stephen up, to tuck him into his loop again, to make him safe. His heart pushed and battered against his ribs until he felt that Stephen must hear it.

"Jack, my dear," said Stephen calmly, water bubbling over his lips.

"Yes, Stephen," Jack managed, though his voice sounded hoarse in his ears.

"One foot closer would not go amiss."

Jack was frozen for a moment, treading in place by rote. But then he slowly floated closer. Just one foot.

Stephen let go of his rope, but in the split-second before he plunged beneath the surface again, he seized Jack's arm with both his crooked hands and held it tightly. Jack was again reminded of the tomcat. He stayed very still, bracing easily against Stephen's negligible weight.

"Were you to waft, to propel, your frame backward," said Stephen, his chin angled sharply to keep his mouth from the sea, "having such a buoyant layer as the cetaceans do, then there would be room for the proper foot motion."

Obediently and without reaction, Jack swam backward, away from the ship and the bowline. He held his arm out before himself as he swam, and clinging to it, Stephen was drawn slowly through the water.

Jack did not watch Stephen's face. He only continued to swim back, breathing carefully, his attention forcibly occupied by a passing bird or the sound of the ship's bell. A plish-plash sound began, as Stephen's feet kicked up and down, up and down.

Jack towed Stephen away, and then curved around, describing a great circle. Several times Stephen actually released Jack's arm with one hand or the other, and paddled with it in an imitation of Jack's former demonstrations. His strokes were hasty and tight, but determined, and Jack paid no attention to them.

After some time—and much longer than he would have expected, had he ever expected this—Jack could feel the flagging rhythm of the kicks and the paddling, and shifts in the grip on his arm. He gradually continued their circle, returning at last to the side of the ship.

When he dared look at Stephen again, Stephen's eyes were heavy-lidded, his cheeks warm with exercise. He breathed hard, and though the rope was once again close at hand, he did not let go of Jack.

"Thank you, Jack," he said, almost formally. "I was most interested to see the theory in action."

"Anytime, old fellow," Jack said. "I take it the experiment was a success?"

"There are some variables yet to be determined," Stephen said. He flexed his fingers with great care, and as he adjusted his hold, he let himself float up close to Jack so that he could lean upon Jack's shoulder. Jack's arm went most naturally around Stephen's waist, and their bare legs brushed together, skin slipping past skin beneath the water.

"Well," said Jack, his breath feeling a bit short, "I am always pleased to...to lend any assistance. As required."

That was as much as he dared to say, and certainly more than he dared to do, letting himself hold on to Stephen for a moment before Stephen would surely pull away.

But Stephen had not. And he did not. He leaned still longer on Jack, his hands open and relaxed in the warming sea, and gazed past him into the sky. They floated there in peaceful, undemanding quiet, Jack easily supporting them both, listening to the water and the sounds of the living ship above them. And something of Jack that had been torn asunder back in Mahon, something that had bled within him ever since the foul machine, began to heal.

"I will swim tomorrow," said Stephen matter-of-factly. "And without the rope, God love it. Though I would hope it might still be lowered, in case—"

"In case your little creature has a friend?"

"Exactly so," said Stephen, smiling.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to klia and mary crawford for beta help! Title from Rudyard Kipling's "The Sea and the Hills".
> 
> Originally written for the 2016 Advent Calendar in the Perfect Duet community, [http://perfect-duet.dreamwidth.org](http://perfect-duet.dreamwidth.org/) and <http://perfect-duet.livejournal.com> .


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